Nightshade

He removed his shirt, then tore off his undershirt and skinned out of his trousers. He lay beside his sister, their naked bodies curling around one another's. He was not cold anymore. He pressed his lips hard into Lucy's. He detached from her mouth and bent his head down to where her generous breasts bobbed in the night air. Taking one rosy nipple between his lips he suckled until she cried out in discomfort, at which point he switched to the second nubbin to repeat the process. Popping her nipple out of his mouth he licked and kissed the smooth underside of her breasts, teasing the soft flesh with his tongue.

Eventually Lucy pushed his head away. "Give me life," she said, looking deep within his soul. Nathan positioned himself between his younger sister's legs. His penis pushed against her soft furrow, the sensitive head dipping to part her outer lips. Her insides were not as warm as he would have imagined, but they were not cold as her skin. His penis squirmed in, fractions of an inch at a time. She was extremely snug, a testament to her purity.

"Oh Nathan," she squealed as he bloodlessly punctured the fleshy barrier of her virginity and pushed in the rest of the way. Their pubic areas were mashed together in unholy union, her pitch black curls mingled with his own dark brown. After a moment just savoring their connection the siblings simultaneously began a gentle hip-rocking.

"Give me life," she said again. He hastened his movements and plunged her depths bringing sharp cries from his little sister, loud enough to wake the dead, he thought morbidly.

Nathan was close to that wonderful feeling that accompanied sexual release. In mere seconds his warm semen would spray inside his little sister. Something flitted over his head, a black shadow of a bird he thought. He and Lucy continued to mate as the little creature perched clinging upside down from the limb of an ancient pin oak. Lucy glared at it, flashing her stark white teeth. Nathan peered at it in the moonlit boughs of the oak, it was a bat. Lucy's moans guided his attention back to her as she met his thrusts harder with her own.

Her orgasm came first. She moaned and mewled as she wrapped her lean arms around his back. Lucy stretched to meet his neck with her lips. She sucked his neck hard, bringing more pain to the already irritated area. He didn't ask her to stop though, he wouldn't have denied her anything at that point. He felt a sharp sting. Had she bitten him?

The bat flapped from the tree branch into the autumn sky just as Nathan released the first spray. He deposited six squirts of semen within her, before collapsing onto her lithe body. His penis slipped out of her and the two lovers melted together, naked in the grass of the little church cemetery. For the second straight night Nathan fell asleep in his sister's embrace.

The first light of dawn finally stirred Nathan Aberdeen. He tried to gather his senses as he squinted into the rising sun. He was not alone. "Lucy," he called sitting up only to have a firm hand push him back to a reclining position.

"No, unfortunately it is only I, my poor boy." Reverend Blake smiled warmly.

Nathan scrambled for his clothes, but found that he was already wearing them. "Where--- where's Lucy?" he asked as the Reverend helped him to stand.

"She's here," the Reverend answered pointing to her grave.

"No, no I was with her last night. I could see her, feel her. We, we..." Nathan stopped, he wasn't ready to tell all that they had done, presuming it had actually happened.

"I will take you home, your father must be worried sick."

Not another word was uttered on the carriage ride home. Nathan just sat beside the good Reverend and shivered beneath his heavy coat.

***

Frank Aberdeen was saddling up one of the horses when the Reverend's carriage pulled up to the house. He helped the reverend escort his son to his room and into bed.

"Reverend, I can't begin to thank you. Where did you find him?" The concerned father had just woken up to discover his son had not come home. He was set to begin searching when the reverend showed up.

"He was in the cemetery, asleep on Lucy's grave."

"I might have known." Frank would have cussed had his present company been anyone else.

"Your son is very sick. He's burning up with fever."

Frank felt his son's head, and indeed Nathan was on fire.

"You should fetch Dr. Walker," the Reverend said.

"No, I'll wait for Doc Hooper."

"Doc Hooper is the night doctor."

"Yeah, but he was good enough to my little Lucy. I wouldn't trust my boy with anyone else.

The Reverend and Dr. Hooper conferred by the open window that night as Frank Aberdeen sat at the side of his son's bed.

"Frank, I'm sorry." The doctor put his hand on the storekeepers shoulder and it was confirmed, the mysterious plague had pegged Nathan as it's next victim.

Frank felt as if he could weep. "It isn't fair!" He pounded his fist on the bedside table. "First my little girl and now my only son."

"These peculiar marks on his throat are consistent with the scars left by the bubonic plague." Doc Hooper chewed on the end of an unlit pipe.

"It is no plague," a soft old European voice warned. Baroness Latos brought in mugs of coffee on a brass tray for the gentlemen.

"What else would you call this thing that has inflicted so many in our small town." Doctor Hooper took the first mug.

"The marks on the throat are not the black death. I have seen them before in my home country. They are the marks of a vampire."

Doc Hooper poorly suppressed a laugh. "Baroness, with all due respect in this country illnesses are explained with science not superstition."

"The learned men in Budapest speak as you do, they say that all things can be explained by science. "My people, and the people of other villages in the Carpathian Mountains have been preyed upon by the undead for generations. At night we lock our doors, shutter our windows and sleep beneath a crucifix. That would keep us safe most of the time. Most of the time." Other than Dr. Hooper's regular irritated sighs the little group remained interested in Baroness Latos' tale. "I remember the first class I ever taught, there was a little girl, a farmer's child, who wandered into the forest one afternoon to gather sticks for the stove. She must have become lost, because when night fell and she still had not come home her family searched the entire village. The next morning a neighbor found the girl pale and delirious on the roadside, after a week of suffering she was dead, the cause was ruled an unnatural loss of blood."

"Tragic story Baroness, but hardly evidence of the supernatural. She could have easily been injured in the forest and bled to death," Dr. Hooper said.

"There were no wounds, other than two small puncture marks on the throat."

Beside the little conference Nathan Aberdeen shifted in his bed. He mumbled a plead for his sister. "Does he do that often?" Baroness asked.

"Call for Lucy?" Frank asked, "yeah, ever since the dreams started."

"Dreams?"

"According to Jack, Nathan's been having dreams about Lucy, he even swears she's been in the house, even in his room."

"When I found him in the cemetery this morning he said Lucy had been with him last night," the reverend added.

"Oh no that is terrible," Baroness said bringing manicured fingers to her lips. Frank Aberdeen grabbed her arm demanding to know what she meant. "Your daughter was the first to die. I think Lucy is the one, the vampire."

"No not my little girl. She wouldn't, couldn't."

"And your son will be her next victim."

Frank went silent as the eyes of the group fell solely on him. "My little girl." After a while he finally sighed. "Can I save my son, can it be stopped?"

"Yes there are two ways, although I'm afraid they are rather unpleasant," she said looking to Frank, "and most assuredly unscientific," she added with a glance to the doctor.

"This is madness! Reverend, surely you're not taken in by this superstition."

The reverend pulled off his eyeglasses, rubbing them with the sleeve of his jacket, before balancing them back atop his nose. "I have seen with my own eyes five new tombstones in one year." He placed his hand upon Nathan's perspiring brow. "I fear that if we do not heed Baroness' advice we will be digging a new grave very soon."

"It is said that there are two ways of destroying a vampire," Baroness explained, "the first is to drive a stake or other wooden object through it's heart." Frank Aberdeen cringed at the words. "The other is to disturb it's grave so that it cannot return before the next sunrise."

"I will ask Willie Granger to exhume Lucy's grave tomorrow afternoon," Reverend Blake said placing what was meant to be a comforting hand on Frank's shoulder.

"I have to be there, I have to see..."

"We will all go with you," Baroness said.

"I will have no part in any of this. I warn you, leave the dead buried, that is where they belong." Dr. Hooper's feet fell heavily on the floorboards as he stormed out of the Aberdeen house.

***

A small group gathered in the little churchyard cemetery that afternoon. The Reverend, the girl's father, the schoolteacher and two deputies of Nightshade's sheriff were all in attendance. Willie the cemetery's caretaker was already up to his forehead in the freshly dug pit as he plunged his shovel in the dirt. He thought the whole affair was rather sordid, especially with it being Halloween. Eventually he struck the coffin. Using the back of his shovel, he moved the soil around it.

The pine box showed expected weathering, a result of a year beneath the ground. The wood was dark and moist and displayed signs of rot. The lid had been hinged for the funeral and much to the gravedigger's surprise had never been nailed shut. Once the wooden box was lugged up to the surface the task soon fell to decide who would open it. Since it was Willie's misfortune to be employed as a gravedigger, among other duties no one in their right mind would be willing to undertake, the task fell to him. The rusted hinges groaned as he flipped the box open, revealing the corpse of a young woman.

Only it hardly seemed like a corpse at all. The little group inhaled simultaneously as the remains of Lucy Aberdeen were revealed. Willie had been conscripted to exhume corpses before, usually for reburial, so he had seen some pretty grisly sights, but surely after a year of being dead and buried the body should show some signs of decay. Her pretty face, dark curly hair, even the silken white nightgown she wore seemed to be perfectly preserved. It was downright unnatural.

Frank Aberdeen fell to his knees a torrent of tears escaping his ducts despite his best efforts. "No, not my little girl. My little Lucy." He sobbed into the comforting shoulder of the schoolteacher Ms. Latos. The poor man had lost his wife, he had lost his daughter and now, according to the good reverend, his son lay dying.

"You may take the body into the chapel," the reverend said. The caretaker nodded he and the two deputies carried the muddy casket into the chapel, setting it in front of the altar.

Frank Aberdeen kneeled before his daughter's coffin. He muttered a few words Willie couldn't make out, then tenderly touched her forehead. The reverend comforted the distraught father. "Tomorrow this poor creature's soul will be redeemed and her body will have a new Christian burial."

Willie and the reverend were left alone with the body. The caretaker ventured for a closer look at the girl while Reverend Blake fiddled with something on the altar. If he hadn't been the one to bury her a year ago, Willie would have sworn the girl was just sleeping. He reached for one of her small hands. Her fingers were still pliable, yet cold and lifeless.

"Willie" the reverend said making the ragged caretaker jump away from the coffin with an awful fright. The reverend was palming the wooden crucifix fastened to the front of the altar. "Fetch me a prying bar."

***

Halloween night was supposed to be when ancient and evil spirits roamed freely about the earth. As Nathan Aberdeen blinked awake, he thought he heard someone in his room. "Lucy," he wheezed.

"No. Not this time." Doc Hooper was milling at the open window staring intently in the direction of the little churchyard. "Drink this my boy." He was handed a small glass brimming with dark liquid. Nathan took the glass and drank it's thick contents in one swallow. At last he found the strength to move from the bed.

"Why are you here? Is my father ill?"

"He is at the Halloween ball with Ms. Latos. I convinced them that the distraction would do your father well. I am here to watch over you and to make sure that you are no longer troubled by your sister."

But Nathan didn't want that, he desperately looked forward to his sister's nightly visits, even if they were only dreams. Nathan twisted the sheets of his bed in his hands. Am I losing my mind, he thought.

"You aren't mad. You really saw your sister last night, the previous one as well."

"How could you say I have seen her, you yourself pronounced her dead from plague a year ago?" Nathan squeezed his fists into tight balls and pounded his bed.

"You're sister did not die of any natural illness, she was bitten by a vampire. That is why she troubles you now."

Nathan's dark ringed eyes locked onto the doctor's. "Doctor!" Nathan shouted. "Are you saying that my Lucy---"

"Is a monster. An unholy creature who roams at night feeding upon the blood of the living." Nathan sat back on his bed, holding his throbbing skull, inwardly doubting and denying with every fiber of his being. "You can deny but you know what those marks on your throat are, you know why you have them."

Nathan felt his throat, six marks, a pair for each night he was visited. "But why? Why would she prey on me?"

"She would bleed this whole town dry if given the chance. The old men and children have already been made her victims."

Nathan's pulse quickened he lumbered to the window to ensure that it was latched, then to the door to check the lock. "Lucy will not come here now. Her coffin was exhumed this afternoon and taken inside the church, the one place where a vampire has no power. But it cannot be destroyed so easily. There is only one way your sister's soul can be saved." The doctor reached into his coat and removed a mallet and a sharpened wooden stake.

"Doctor Hooper, no," Nathan Aberdeen said, he sat on the edge of his bed and shuddered at the mere thought.

"It must be done my boy," he said handing the implements to Nathan, "and you must do it." Without a second thought Nathan slammed the stake and mallet to the floor. "There is no other way to end this curse and save your own life."

"I would rather die than harm her."

"There is no other way to save her soul. She would go on forever, killing, each life she claims further cementing her eternal damnation." Tears stung Nathan's eyes as he slinked off the bed to the cold floor. He couldn't let that happen. Weak hands gathered the tools by which he would destroy his beloved sister.

***

Hooves stilled as Dr. Hooper brought his carriage to a stop. The full moon cast it's glow on the little church's steeple bathing the large wooden cross in pale moonshine. The doctor bowed his head at the sign of the cross, this struck Nathan as odd since Doctor Hooper had never demonstrated himself to be a particularly religious man, but the circumstances were rather unique. They stopped at the threshold.

"You must go alone from here on my boy." The doctor backed away from the door. Nathan protested. "You must!" the doctor said more forcefully, Nathan nodded. "Her dark powers will be diluted in the house of God, but her hold over you is still strong, do not let yourself become so seduced that you forget what you must do."

Nathan gathered his courage. He was about to straddle that fine line between saving and sinning. He gripped the wooden stake tightly as he entered the little building. Candlelight glowed warmly in the little chapel, a weathered coffin sat before the reverend's altar. He approached the pine box wondering if he would actually go through with it. The hairs bristled on his neck. It seemed an absurd notion to fear the beautiful young woman he had known and loved in life but now she was something no longer human.

He could feel his pulses throb with every beat of his heart. He lifted the lid to Lucy's coffin, it's rusty hinges called out in protest. He wasn't sure what manner of creature he would find within the pine box. Much to his consternation, instead of a gnarled monster with dripping fangs, he found the serene form of his beloved sister, eyes closed and fingers laced over her midsection.

She looked just as she had in life, just as she had the past two nights, when she pleaded with him to 'give her life.' His shaking left hand placed the stake over her heart pressing into the flesh near her bosom. He raised the mallet ready to strike as hard as he could muster, but stopped.

How could anything that lovely be evil, no that was just her influence over him, clouding his mind with impure thoughts. He had to destroy her unholy body and save the soul of not only her but all of her victims. He raised the mallet again before looking into her dark eyes and lowering it once more. This time he wasn't disarmed by his conscious but by her lovely smile. She stared at him with love unconditional, something so pure as to not be misconstrued as evil or enchantment.

"Lucy, forgive me," he said leaning over her body, resting his head over her still heart. She stroked the back of his neck with her lithe fingers.

"I know why you have come dear brother," she said taking the stake from his hand, "if you wish to destroy me I will submit, but first allow me this one last night upon the earth with you." Her fingers combed his damp hair as he promised her anything she wished. "I wish for you to give me life."

"Lucy," he blushed, "we can't. Not here."

"Of course not here." She smiled wide and for the first time he saw the sharpness of her teeth. "Do you remember last year you promised to dance with me at the Halloween Ball if I was well enough?" Nathan nodded. "I'm afraid I spoiled our evening by dying."

"Oh Lucy--"

She raised her fingers to his lips to hush her brother. "Just one dance, with you, in front of the whole town." He voiced some concerns. "We'll have masks, no one will know."

"And then?"

"And then you can do with me what you wish." She put the stake back in his hand.

Lucy Aberdeen clung tightly to her brother as they stepped outside into the night air. The horse and carriage still waited at the roadside. "I wonder what became of Doctor Hooper?" Nathan asked as he helped his petite sister into the carriage to sit beside him. "I hardly feel right taking his carriage."

"Don't worry about that one," she said, her voice distant, "he has other ways of traveling."

Nathan drove the carriage swiftly through the streets of Nightshade to reach home. Nathan was in his room halfway changed when he heard a timid knock. "Come in," he said. Lucy padded in, still wearing her silken nightgown, a dress was in her arms, dragging the floor.

"I need you," she said, pausing a moment to get a look at his bare chest, "I need help getting in my dress." Nathan could only manage a swallow and a nod. She turned away from him as he unfastened the back of her nightgown. He let the silky fabric drift down her curvy body to the floor. His eyes consumed her, following the path led by her curly raven's hair over her slim shoulders to where it stopped just inches away from her perfect, rounded bottom. His fingers brushed her soft buttocks taking in their lovely contours. Lucy giggled a bit, she was ticklish there.

His fingers traced their way upwards drinking in the spectacular curves that marked the boundaries of her hips, waist and bust. What a spectacular bust she had, her breasts were large and plump on her small frame, each one spilled out of his hands as he cupped them.